The Trump administration looks to be gearing up its next big attack on Planned Parenthood … and reproductive health care for low-income women more generally. Federal Title X funds go to family planning services not including abortion. Until now, decisions about where Title X money goes have been made by a small group of officials, but now, the decisions will be in one person’s hands. And that person is longtime abstinence advocate Valerie Huber, the acting deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services. That’s this Valerie Huber:
Huber has criticized American culture in general and Planned Parenthood specifically for “normalizing” sex among teens and for glossing over the risks of sex before marriage.
“We think it’s very important for teens to know that even if they use a condom or contraception, that doesn’t make sex safe. It doesn’t mean they won’t get pregnant. It doesn’t mean they won’t have an STD. It doesn’t mean they won’t have any negative consequences,” she said in a 2012 speech to the Bringing America Back to Life symposium. “We think that young people need to know information that is going to help them make the best decision — and that best decision is to wait.”
If Huber moves funding away from Planned Parenthood and toward scammy “crisis pregnancy centers” and abstinence-only organizations—which she’s hinted she’ll do, saying she wants to “make some meaningful changes to extend the coverage of the program”—here’s what’s at stake:
"This is unprecedented, and has dangerous implications,” said Kashif Syed, a senior analyst at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “We’re talking about a program that 4 million people rely on for basic reproductive health care — or in many cases, their only form of health care. Now is not the time to play politics with people’s lives — but that’s exactly what the Trump-Pence administration is doing.”
Planned Parenthood treats about 41 percent of Title X patients but did not say how much total funding it gets through the program.
If federal funding for that basic reproductive health care for four million people suddenly shifts away from condoms and other contraceptives and comprehensive sexual education toward “Just don’t have sex. And if you do, do it in ignorance of birth control options. And definitely don’t have an abortion, no matter what,” a lot of lives could be devastated.